Narrative resistance: a socio-pragmatic post-colonial analysis of Refaat Alareer’s Palestinian internal voice

Mohamed Ramadan Abdelk ader Elzayat, Shaker Rizk, Abeer M.Refky M. Seddeek, Riham E. A. Debian

Abstract


Palestinian narratives from Gaza occupy a crucial nexus of language, power, and resistance. This study investigates how the “internal voice of Palestine” emerges in selected works of Refaat Alareer – including a personal essay “The Story of My Brother, Martyr Mohammed Alareer”, a short story “On a Drop of Rain” (from Gaza Writes Back), his essay in Light in Gaza, and the poem “If I Must Die” – through a socio-pragmatic post-colonial lens. Grounding our analysis in Grice’s Cooperative Principle and its conversational maxims, alongside post-colonial theory (Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism and Bill Ashcroft’s concept of writing back), we examine how Alareer’s texts communicate Palestinian experiences and agency. We employ close textual analysis of dialogue, narrative structure, and implied meanings (implicatures) within their social context of occupation and resistance. Quantitative counts of key thematic words and pragmatic features are combined with qualitative thematic analysis.

Keywords: Palestinian literature (Gaza); internal narrative voice; pragmatics (Grice’s Cooperative Principle, implicature); post-colonial theory (Orientalism, “writing back”); resistance literature; subaltern voice.


Received on: 31 March 2025

Accepted on: 07 April 2025

Published on: 23 September 2025


Full Text:

PDF

References


Abusalim, Jehad, Jennifer Bing, and Michael Merryman-Lotze. 2022. Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

Achebe, Chinua. 1987. Anthills of the Savannah. Oxford: Heinemann.

Alareer, Refaat. 2014. Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine. Charlottesville, Virginia : Just World Books.

———. 2023. “‘If I Must Die,’ A Poem by Refaat Alareer.” https://inthesetimes.com/article/refaat-alareer-israeli-occupation-palestine.

Alareer, Refaat, and Laila El-Haddad. 2015. Gaza Unsilenced . Northampton, MA: Interlink Publishing.

————, ed. Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine. Memorial ed. Charlottesville, VA: Just World Books, 2014.

Asada, Kosuke, Shoji Itakura, Mako Okanda, Yusuke Moriguchi, Kaori Yokawa, Shinichiro Kumagaya, Kaoru Konishi, and Yukuo Konishi. 2022. “Understanding of the Gricean Maxims in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Implications for Pragmatic Language Development.” Journal of Neurolinguistics 63 (August): 101085. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2022.101085.

Ashcroft, Bill. 2010. “Representation and Liberation: From Orientalism to the Palestinian Crisis.” In Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation, 113–21. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1861-light-in-gaza?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

———. 2013. Post-Colonial Transformation. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203129814.

Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 2003. The Empire Writes Back. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203426081.

Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

Bing, Jennifer. 2023. “Lessons from Refaat Alareer, Storyteller.” https://electronicintifada.net/content/lessons-refaat-alareer-storyteller/43056.

Black, Elizabeth. 2006a. Pragmatic Stylistics. Edinburgh. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

———. 2006b. Pragmatic Stylistics. Edinburgh. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

CANLI, Mustafa. 2021. “Violation of Grice’s Maxims and Its Effect on the Conversational Structure and Plot Development of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.” Eurasian Journal of English Language and Literature 3 (2): 386–94. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/1652946.

Caruth, Cathy. 1996. “Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History.” Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Ceccaldi, Aurélie. 2015. “The Gricean Cooperative Principle at Work in Fictional Narratives : The Case of Reporting Clauses.” Recherches Anglaises et Nord-Américaines 48 (1): 97–112. doi:10.3406/ranam.2015.1494.

Eagleton, Terry. 2008. Literary Theory: An Introduction. University of Minnesota Press.

Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.

Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. 1992. Testimony Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. New York: Routledge.

Gallien, Claire. 2016. “Minding (About) the Gazan Border in Contemporary Palestinian Literature.” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 39 (1): 57–68. doi:10.4000/ces.4753.

Green, Rachel. 2024. “Empathy in Post-Oslo Palestinian Literature: Reading between Identification and Recognition in Ala Hlehel’s Au Revoir Acre and Ibtisam Azem’s The Book of Disappearance.” Comparative Literature 76 (1): 65–85. doi:10.1215/00104124-10897120.

Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, edited by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58.

Harlow, Barbara, and Mia Carter. 2023. Resistance Literature. London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003378013.

Hasan, Md. Mahmudul. 2024. “The Inseparability of Postcolonial Studies from Palestine: Reflections on Edward Said.” Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature 18 (1): 1–17. doi:10.31436/asiatic.v18i1.3208.

Kasper, Gabriele, and Shoshana Blum-Kulka. 1993. Interlanguage Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.

Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.

Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press.

Maccoby, Deborah. 2024. “Review of If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose, by Refaat Alareer. Jewish Voice for Labour.” https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/if-i-must-die-2/.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. 1986. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: Heinemann.

Orwell, George. 1945. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. London: Secker and Warburg.

Said, Edward. 1984. “Permission to Narrate.” Journal of Palestine Studies 13 (3): 27–48. doi:10.2307/2536688.

———. 1993. Culture and Imperialism . New York: Knopf.

———. 1994. Representations of the Intellectual. New York: Vintage.

Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.

———. 1986. After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sayigh, Rosemary. 2019. “Refaat Alareer (Ed.) Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine.” Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies 18 (2): 263–66. doi:10.3366/hlps.2019.0218.

Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Thomas, Jenny. 1995. Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. London: Longman.

Turner, Victor. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. Oxford University Press.

Zipes, Jack. 2012. The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.




DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21622/ILCC.2025.05.2.1286

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2025 Mohamed Ramadan Abdelk ader Elzayat, Shaker Rizk, Abeer M.Refky M.Seddeek and Riham. E. A. Debian

Insights into Language, Culture and Communication

E-ISSN: 2812-491X

P-ISSN: 2812-4901

 

Published by:

Academy Publishing Center (APC)

Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT)

Alexandria, Egypt

ilcc@aast.edu